Operation and Monitoring of the CMS Regional Calorimeter Trigger Hardware

The electronics for the Regional Calorimeter Trigger (RCT) of the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment (CMS) have been produced, tested, and installed. The RCT hardware consists of one clock distribution crate and 18 double-sided crates containing custom boards, ASICs, and backplanes. The RCT receives 8-bit energies and a data quality bit from the HCAL and ECAL Trigger Primitive Generators (TPGs) and sends it to the CMS Global Calorimeter Trigger (GCT) after processing. Integration tests with the TPG and GCT subsystems have been successful. Installation is complete and the RCT is integrated into the Level-1 Trigger chain. Data taking has begun using detector noise, cosmic rays, proton-beam debris, and beamhalo muons. The operation and configuration of the RCT is a completely automated process. The tools to monitor, operate, and debug the RCT are mature and will be described in detail, as well as the results from data taking with the RCT.